Haircuts

I'm stretching back to January for these pictures.  I needed a haircut and Noah desperately needed someone who knew what they were doing to trim his hair as he has decided that he is going to grow out his hair.  He wants a long shaggy do.  We all trekked to the hair salon and Natalie got her hair trimmed too.  Then Brian took N2 to Culvers while I got my hair cut.  I really like how Noah's hair turned out.  My stylist ended up trimming quite a bit of Natalie's hair and we discovered that her hair naturally curls under.  Amazing!  I need to keep it trimmed to this length more often.  It's probably time for me to trim her again already!

February miscellaneous pictures

Here are some random pictures from February.  I came down one morning on either Saturday or Sunday when N2 get up before Brian and I and found N2 reading together on the couch.  The both got the same books and audioreader and they were trying to both read the book at the same time.

Noah lost another tooth last month.  I rarely get him to cooperate for pictures but it let me take pictures of him.  Here is what I got.

I tried to take pictures of random daily actions rather than of events.  N2 got magnet tiles for Christmas and they love playing with them.  Here is one of their creations.

Birthday-random

We let N2 open a present on their birthday before I left for work.  Noah chose his biggest present and Natalie her smallest.  Noah's was a dress up knight set.  Originally we thought Noah was going to have a knight birthday party and when I saw this set on zulily, I ordered it.  He loves this dress up set as does Natalie.  We have actually had some arguments about who gets to wear what.  The helmet is a little small but they don't care!

Here are my birthday kids.  My big six year olds.

They got to blow out candles 3 different times!  Once at their family party, one on their birthday and one at their friends party.

 N2 got a lot of Legos for their birthday which is good because they love Legos.  The both worked all their sets on our kitchen table so we had quite the collection going on!  Thank you to all our family for the gifts for N2.

At N2's friend's birthday party, Natalie got a Sofia the first bag and water bottle as well as sunglasses and a case from one of the girls who came to the party.  Natalie is not a girly girl but I caught her looking quite girly with all of these things.

Rats

For Natalie's birthday we decided we would buy her a pet.  She is such an animal lover (not sure where she gets that) but Noah is allergic to cats (so is Brian) and somewhat to dogs (nor do I like dogs) so we had to get a small pet.  We decided against reptiles, fish and amphibians because they aren't exciting plus they need a lot of special equipment.  That left small mammals.  After Brian did a lot of research it seemed that rats are the best small mammals to have.  They are the friendliest, most hygienic and trainable pets.  They can tolerate a lot of handling without biting which can't be said for other rodents.  I had a hard time trying to decide if I could have rats in my house but they actually are really cute!  I ignore their tails :)

We gave Natalie the cage on the day of her birthday party and then went that evening to get rats.  We ended up having to go to 2 pet stores because we were not going to get white rats with red eyes.  We ended up with 2 rats since they are very social.  They are both hooded rats, one with a gray hood and one with a tan hood.  The gray one is named Trixie and is a small rat.  The tan one is named Golden and is a medium rat.  We wanted 2 small rats but the store only had 3-one white with red eyes and the other one had an injured foot.  Natalie named her rats after cereals.  It took a long time for her to pick names.  I haven't gotten good pictures yet because they don't come out of their cage.

They have been very shy since we got them.  They don't like being out of their cage and exploring.  Natalie thinks she got nipped (which Brian and I don't think she did-we think Golden turned to smell her and Natalie yanked her hand back and scraped it on the cage) so she is very hesitant to touch them anymore.  But she LOVES to watch them.  Brian has done all of the handling.  They try to get the rats out in the bathroom but the rats don't like to get out.  We have tried to get them out on the dining room table (don't worry, we sanitize the table afterwards) because they can't get off the table but they don't want to get out-the scurry back to their cage (at least we know now that they want to be in their cage).  Brian has been able to hold them.  Hopefully they warm up soon.  We have not been successful in training them yet but since they are still shy around us, it may take us more time.  Generally rats like people but most likely these rats weren't handled at all before us.

We had an adventure with Trixie a couple nights after we got the rats.  Natalie wanted to get them out and she took out their tube (their home) and dumped Trixie out on the floor.  This was in the middle of the living room.  Trixie immediately took off for under the couch.  She stayed under there exploring under the couch and was too afraid to come out.  She had her trapped under the couch but somehow she got behind our bookcase and then behind the TV stand.  We just could not trap her!  She managed to escape us and we lost her for a few minutes but then found her under our recliner.  Finally we got the chair out of the way, dragged the cage over to where she was and hoped she would go in.  Nope, she tried to escape via the magazine rack, got stuck in there and then Brian was able to dump her back in the cage.  Our house was a disaster area!  It took us an hour and 35 minutes to get her back in the cage.  Needless to say we haven't tried to get them out in the living room again!

Snow

At the beginning of February we finally had enough snow to play in.  Up until that point we hardly had snow and N2 couldn't really do much with the snow.  But then we had 15-18 inches (I can't remember) in one day and then more snow after that.  Unfortunately it turned really cold right after that so we didn't have a lot of playing in the snow days.  When they were outside they spent time tunneling through the piles on the sides of the driveway.  Noah also spent his fair share of time eating snow.